iPhone 13 pro max: Better Then you think

iPhone 13 pro max review

iPhone 13 Pro Max! When it comes to this latest iPhone update, I’ve been listening to a lot of people refer to it as the 12S even after Apple already gave it the 13 titles, with the main reason being that nothing actually changed.

And yes, on the surface, it doesn’t actually show that much different, because it’s got the same flat-sided design, the same camera layout, albeit larger this year, the same groove, which is a bit smaller, and not that many new major feature changes.

But I’d say that the true value of the 13 Pro Max is hidden beneath the surface, with changes that show complexity at first, but are hugely important if they were ever taken away!

But before I get into all of that, I want to refer back to the many important features of the iPhone 12 Pro Max that I’ve been using for the past year and talk about what actually changed my life, because if you think about it, that’s why people upgrade their iPhones! They want to feel that difference every day!

Life-changing features of last year’s 12 pro max

. MagSafe magnetic charging

. iPhone 12 pro come with an extra 2GB of RAM compared to 11 pro

. Addition of the new 5G modem

MagSafe magnetic charging

Believe it or not, out of everything new with the 12 Pro, the MagSafe magnetic charging feature changed my everyday life the most since I don’t like using a case and the built-in Magnets allow me to mount my phone either at my office or even better, in my car! So I can use it with just one hand while reading notifications and everything else, all while charging the battery.

This alone is by far the best thing to ever happen to my iPhone experience and at first, it seemed like a very subtle or minor update. Now while it wasn’t that big of a deal, the new flat-sided design was still important because it made my daily experience feel fresh and those boxy sides also improved my grip on the phone more than ever before.

iPhone 12 pro come with an extra 2GB of RAM compared to 11 pro

The iPhone 12 Pro came with an extra 2GB of RAM compared to my old 11 Pro and this was a game-changer because all of my issues with apps closing on me went away instantly, making my iPhone even more reliable!

Addition of the new 5G modem

And finally, the last major life-changer was the addition of the new 5G modem, but it wasn’t necessarily for 5G itself, because regular LTE speeds because a LOT faster and more reliable, so all of the issues I used to have with bad service and YouTube videos pausing and buffering disappeared.

So if you didn’t already upgrade to the 12 Pro, you need to realize that those awesome features that impacted my life the most are also gonna be coming to the iPhone 13 Pro and they’ll likely be important to many of you as well.

13 Pro-Max Speaker Quality Improvement

But now that you understand what I mean by subtle yet very important features, it’s time to dive deep into the new features of the 13 Pro Max that are already starting to change my everyday life.

First up, the built-in speakers are incredibly important to me because I like to turn on YouTube videos while I’m getting ready and showering in the morning, as well as random times throughout the day when I’m not using my AirPods.

And this year, there is a massive improvement in terms of both the speaker quality and the volume compared to the 12 Pro Max, finally matching or even beating out the best speakers you can get on a Samsung flagship phone like the S21 ultra. Just hear it for yourself.

So this change alone is a nice little quality of life improvement, and even my friend instantly noticed the difference with her new 13 Pro which means that this is important for everyone, not just tech-heads!

New Display & Notch Updates

Another difference I really love is the ability to manually adjust the display brightness even brighter than on the 12 Pro Max, now up to 1000 nits instead of 800, and this is huge for me because I personally don’t like using auto-brightness and I love that extra boost of brightness when I’m outside and it’s hard to see the display.

And of course, while the notch isn’t that much bigger, it does feel a bit fresher and new compared to older iPhones, so I guess it’s a nice little touch.

New 120hz ProMotion Feature

Now the most controversial new feature is definitely 120hz ProMotion because of the unique way that Apple pulled it off, causing people to call it FAKE 120hz, which is obviously the wrong take. And even though it is real, many people are saying that it’s not really noticeable.

For example, Joshua Chang did an experiment with a few of his friends to see if they would notice ProMotion on the new iPhone, and out of 5 people, only one of them noticed the difference without receiving any hints from Joshua.

Now I also ran the same experiment on my wife with her 13 Pro and she honestly didn’t notice anything until I turned low power mode on which by the way limits the frame rate back down to 60hz to save battery life, and then only at that point, she noticed the difference in smoothness.

So just like my friend, were easily able to tell the difference when they finally compared 120hz ProMotion to their old 60hz iPhones. And that right there is the point I want to make about ProMotion! It’s something that’s very complex and hard to notice at first.. especially after you get used to it, but if your 13 Pro ever got taken away and you had to go back to an older iPhone, even the 12 Pro, it feels noticeably worse with very choppy animations and scrolling.

And this is the exact same thing that I experienced when comparing the iPad Pro, which has had ProMotion since 2017, to every other 60hz iPad! The rest just feel slow and choppy compared to the Pro. So here’s a fair warning before we move on if you’re upgrading to the iPhone 13 Pro with 120hz, your iPad experience on every non-Pro 60hz iPad is gonna go WAY down, and you’re gonna be tempted to buy an iPad Pro… and I think that point alone speaks for itself.

Now in terms of how 120hz ProMotion actually works, I honestly think that Apple’s 120hz is better than the competition which has had 120hz for years already.

How ProMotion on 13 pro max Actually works

Just like the other phones out there like Samsung’s Galaxy S21 Ultra, Apple’s ProMotion tech allows the display’s refresh rate to dynamically and automatically adjust between 10hz and 120hz depending on what you’re doing. So if you’re playing a game at 60FPS, the display refreshes at 60hz to match it, or if you’re watching a 24FPS movie, the refresh rate comes down to 24hz to help save a ton of battery life.

But if you’re swiping through your home screen or scrolling through webpages, it can go up to 120hz. But Apple is doing something completely unique and innovative. It matches the speed of your

scrolling or swiping to the refresh rate. So if you’re scrolling at a regular pace while reading a page, it could only be refreshing at 70hz instead of the full 120hz.

And that is the reason why people are calling it fake, but Apple’s logic is that when you’re scrolling slowly, your eyes will only be able to notice a certain amount of refresh rate, so why waste battery life by refreshing at 120hz?

But then if you scroll super fast, the refresh rate can actually go up and hit 120hz because the text is moving so fast that 120hz can actually be noticeable. And of course, when 120FPS support comes to games, they’ll be able to run at a solid 120FPS with no issues. And even better, when everything slows down to a crawl, like let’s say when you look at a photo or you’re reading a static article, the refresh rate goes down to only 10hz in real-time, on the fly, within milliseconds, helping save tons of battery

life.

This is absolutely genius and it’s the #1 reason why the battery life on the 13 Pro Max is the best out of any phone ever made, and I’ll get into that in just a second.

Why 120hz on S21 ultra wastes battery life

Now technically, Samsung’s S21 Ultra’s display is advertised as being able to go down to 10hz, but I’ve been doing a bit of research, and apparently, S21 Ultra users have only ever seen the refresh rate go down to as low as 48Hz while watching 24hz videos on YouTube. But in most apps and situations like reading static articles, it’s still stuck at 60hz, draining 6x more battery life than the iPhone 13 Pro!

And apparently, the S21 Ultra only gets below 48hz when showing the always-on display at 10hz, so I’m gonna go ahead and confirm that Apple’s 120hz is miles ahead of Samsung’s 120hz!